


a likeness of humanity

by apeirophobia



Series: The Clone Theory [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Clones, Drift Side Effects, Dubious Morality, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Human Experimentation, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 00:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10425702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: the children of Project Maelstrom were created with one purpose: to protect the world against a potential future Kaiju uprising.Jake Pentecost and Nate Lambert were made in the image of heroes, by two scientists who dared to play god. when they are reunited  fifteen years later, the lines between human, machine, and monster begin to blur.(in which Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb skirt the law on ethical cloning, weaponize humanity, and save the world. in mostly that order)





	1. April, 2041

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea that the new group of Jaeger Pilots in Pacific Rim II are actually clones of the original generation (specifically that Jake Pentecost is actually Stacker Pentecost's clone, not his son, and that Nate Lambert is a clone of Hercules Hansen) and somehow that spiraled into an ethically gray exploration of Newt and Hermann bioengineering child soldiers, the world of Pacific Rim's attitude towards clones, and the effects of growing up with memories in your head that don't belong to you, and a destiny that you feel like you've already fulfilled.

Jacob "Jake" Pentecost was born in the chaotic aftermath of Operation Pitfall that most people think of as a victory. Created as an insurance policy for the apocalypse, they call him the "son" of Stacker Pentecost. Legally speaking, he doesn't quite exist. There are thirty others--different genders, races, strands of DNA rearranged into perfect (sometimes too perfect, sometimes a little "improved") replications of heroes, fallen and not--in the program. Jake sees a familiarity in them. Beneath unfamiliar faces, soft with youth he doesn't remember, there's a light he's seen before. He has the feeling he's seen that light flicker out before, seen it snuffed out and covered in blood. Jake knows he remembers conversations that he never had, so he tries to ignore the nagging feeling that he's been here before.

 

Jake knows what he is (a clone, a soldier, a project). He knows  _why_ he is, and he figures that gives him an advantage over more randomly created humans. If he can focus on the task he was created for, maybe he can tune out all the human emotions that threaten to distract him from his purpose. Maybe if he tries his hardest, he can keep control over one thing in his life. Himself.

 

Jake Pentecost is fifteen the first time he steps into the Kwoon gym. Jake Pentecost is fifteen, but he has forty years worth of memories. He's five nine and one fifty, an approximation of accelerated full growth, resulting in artificial maturity and intentionally stunted maximum height. His bones are closed, his brain is 80% matured, and his hormones are even at only a decade and a half on Earth. From a scientific point of view, he is a success. Jake will never be Stacker, but for the sake of the program, for the sake of the future, he's close enough.

 

Jake Pentecost is the only child in the program who carries his Original's surname. He knows this, knows it like he knows his Original's name was Stacker Pentecost, and that he helped save the world before Jake was born. He knows that Stacker Pentecost was a Marshall and a hero and a great man. He knows that everyone sees _him_ when they look at Jake. Sometimes everything about Jake has been predetermined. Every milestone he reaches and every attribute he possesses has been studied and predicted. When Jake succeeds, it is the success of an experiment--it is the success of two scientists, the Japanese government, and the whole human race. If he ever fails, the action would be all his own. It would be a first thing he ever owns.

 

This is the first life Jake has lived, everything is new, and yet--and yet sometimes Jake has an undeserved sense of deja vu--like he walking through a life he's already dreamed about. Jake has never been in a fistfight, he's never had a first kiss. He hasn't even taken his driver's test yet, but sometimes Jake remembers being twenty-eight. Sometimes he remembers Tamsin's smile and the backstreets of London and the thrill of taking down Onibaba. Sometimes he remembers being a father. Remembers being a father to the girl who he now calls _mother_. Mako Mori might have been Stacker Pentecost's adopted daughter, but she's the only mother Jake has ever known (when he's four years old, he asks his mother where the blue in her hair has gone). Mako and her partner, Raleigh Beckett, adopted Jake soon after his birth. They raised Jake with love, but they also raised him with the knowledge that he would always end up  _here_. In the Kwoon. In the shatterdome. Ready and willing to fulfill a purpose he never chose.

 

Jake thinks of Stacker Pentecost, the war hero, then of Stacker Pentecost, the beloved and revered friend, and wonders how beholden his future must be to ghosts he never met.

 

His answer is more than an apparition. A boy with strawberry-blond hair and freckles smiles at him from across the Kwoon, fighting staff slung across his shoulders casually and his posture loose, like they're there for a friendly chat, not a match. The boy is about Jake's age and height, but his shoulders are narrower and his eyes are older. He has a tattoo on the inside of his tan wrist--just like all the kids in the program, sans Jake--that marks him as both property and cadet. He's less than half the age of the man in Jake's mind's eye and four inches shorter. He doesn't have an Australian accent. He doesn't have a son. He doesn't have a broken arm. Not this time.

 

There is a silent appraisal as Jake steps forward--the both of them eying each other for a moment--before the other boy says, "I've been waiting for you," and his words would seem ominous if his tone weren't so light. He smiles when he leans towards Jake and says, conspiratorially, "They say you're the one to beat," like it's a secret, tapping his staff on the matt in a way that's reminiscent of a nervous tic. He doesn't look nervous though, and Jake wonders if he's truly caviler (none of them are caviler, none of them can afford to be) or just a good actor.

 

Jake looks from the boy's blue eyes to the dark _N. Lambert_ tattooed on his arm, and says, "It's not supposed to be a fight," his father's words on his tongue before he can stop them. The ink on Lambert's skin is clear and professional, but it looks like it hurt. Jake wonders how much fight he would have if someone tried to do  _that_ to him.

 

"That's what everybody says," Lambert says, distracting Jake from his thoughts of needles and injustice, "...until they lose," and Jake grins at the implied challenge. He thinks he might like Lambert a little more than he's supposed to (he wonders what it would be like to make a friend).

 

"My father says compatibility matches are supposed to be more like a conversation," Jake says, picking up his own staff and stepping onto the mat.

 

"Oh?" says Lambert, a glint of amusement in his eyes, "Then let's talk."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! :D Please leaves kudos & comments if you liked it, I love to hear what you thought! <3


	2. January, 2025

_Kaiju-blue has a half-life of nine months_ , is the thought that runs through Newt's mine when the Breach closes. He doesn't know why he thinks it, at the time. Everyone in the Shatterdome is cheering at Gypsy Danger's successful detonation, even Herc (even _Hermann_ ) and Newt thinks _this is important_. He grins and hugs his lab-partner-turned-Drift-partner, but beneath the purely reactive elation is a feeling of hesitation. He looks around at all the relieved faces of his associates and thinks,  _this is just the beginning_.

 

It takes Newt six hours to figure out what is bugging him. It's that, deep down, he has a feeling that--no--wait. It's not a feeling. Deep down in his psyche, where he felt the collective consciousness of the Kaiju-hivemind connect with his own mind like some orgy of interspecies communication, he knows it's not over yet. He _knows_ the Kaiju are coming back. Knows it like he thought it himself. Knows it's only a matter of time.

 

"They're coming back," Newt tells Hermann, which--in retrospect--is probably superfluous considering that their minds were connected (with said Kaiju) just hours ago. He still says it out loud, on the possibility that Hermann missed the notion in all the information they were subjected to in the mess of consciousness that was the hivemind. Besides, Newt likes to talk. Drifting hasn't changed that.

 

"I know," Hermann says, even though he didn't know it until this moment, "And I know it's exactly the last thing anyone would like to hear at the moment," he says, thinking of Hercules Hansen, who just lost his son and his best friend for the sake of the world. He thinks of his fellows at the Shatterdome, still celebrating in the main hall. He thinks of Raleigh and Mako, who haven't even made it back to the base yet.  _To give so much, for only a reprieve,_ he thinks. Unfair doesn't really begin to cover it.

 

"What do you propose?" Hermann asks, because he knows Newt already has a plan. Hermann felt how fast the scientist's mind worked when they were emerged in the Drift, and he knows that if Newt is telling him about a problem, he's already considering a solution. Newt fixes his blood-shot gaze on Herman, and Hermann thinks,  _Kaiju blue_ , a moment before Newt says, "We need to clone the Ranger program," matter-of-factly, like he's telling Hermann the weather.

 

Hermann's cane clatters to the floor dramatically. He grips the edge of Newt's desk, momentarily forgetting himself. He really shouldn't be this incredulous--Newt drifted with a Kaiju unauthorized, after-all. It shouldn't surprise him that Newt's plan of suggested action is so...audacious. But Hermann Gottlieb is a mathematician, not a megalomaniac, and he'll cling to his stodgy morality if it's to be the last vestiges of his humanity. He can already feel Newt's moral greyness prying at the edge of his conscious, and knows it's only a matter of time before he comes to see things from the scientist's point of view.

 

"Now, Hermann," Newt says, holding his hands up in a calming and condescending manner, "Hear me out."

 

"You're talking about making...people," Hermann says, his mouth finally catching up to his mind, and his mores, "Out of our _friends_ ," and he knows he sounds scandalized. He knows Newt's brilliant mind is bound by neither society's sense of propriety, nor the laws of man, but this is can't end well. Like all twelve year olds, Hermann read Jurassic Park too. He knows it's a cautionary tale. He's always respected that.

 

"I'm talking about making weapons," Newt says dryly, no trace of the usual humor in his voice, "And the easiest way to replicate the Ranger program is to start at the source. Occam's Razor, bro."

 

Hermann knows they could do this. That doesn't mean they  _should_. "But--" he sputters, trying to reconcile Newt's fanboy tattoos and high-strung disposition with his cold front; this no-nonsense pragmatism of talking about people as if their pawns. Newt stoic is a weird look, it's unsettling.

 

"We're talking about _children_ ," Hermann says, and he hears Newton's thoughts in his head--as clear as they were his own-- _we're talking about the future_. Denying the reality of his proposal doesn't make it better. In the face of Newt's determination, all his protests feel token.

 

"We're talking about weapons," Newt says, and then--perhaps realizing that that clarification doesn't exactly help his case--"We're talking about the future of the human race."

 

"We'd be doing exactly what the Kaiju's Masters are already doing," Hermann says, and he realizes he's not saying _no_. Wonders if that should be a comforting thought, or just matter-of-fact. This is what they've come to. This is what it takes. Hermann wonders how much the world is worth after-all, at the end of the day. If they forfeit their humanity in defense of the world then they'll lose, even if they win.

 

"You know the Kaiju-blue in the environment isn't gonna last forever," Newt says quietly, "It's got an absorption timeframe of what, eighteen months? If we're lucky..." and Hermann nods, following his thought process. It's never been proven (there's been no time for formal trials, and no such thing as a control group, not in this day and age), but Drift scientists have long supposed that environmental exposure to second-hand Kaiju Blue plays a part in triggering drifting abilities. A certain portion of the general population have a latent ability to Drift, but children start to exhibit signs of Drift capabilities at a certain age. Incidentally, there is a high correlation between children with Drift compatibilities and children with early exposure to Kaiju Blue. Theoretically Kaiju Blue feeds potential, if it doesn't kill you first, "If the Kaiju come back, they'll come back a generation after the last of the Kaiju-blue has dissipated, in order to ensure that there are no operating Rangers in our population," Newt says.

 

"What's a generation? Fifteen years? Eighteen years? Twenty?" Hermann says, a little hysterically,  _What's a generation in an age where no one dies of natural causes?_ The average life expectancy of Ranger pilot is twenty-eight years. Do the Kaiju even have a concept of how long humans live? Of how long they can live when they're not under constant threat?

 

"You do the math." Newt orders him, and Hermann nods. There has to be a way to tell when exactly the Kaiju are coming back. Or, there should be a way to determine when they _can_ come back. After that, it's up to them. Up to them and the future of the Ranger Program.

 

"Clones, guaranteed to be drift-capable, designed to drift-compatible," Newt says, and he almost sounds like he's talking to himself, "It's perfect," he breaths.

 

"No, it's not," Hermann says, loathe to call any solution that supersedes anyone's human rights _perfect_. "But it's brilliant," and Newton beams.

 

Hermann Gottlieb may be sacrificing his ethics for the greater good (and how cliche' is that?) but Hermann made a choice to help Newton Geiszler save the world--when he _chose_ to drift with him and a Kaiju-brain in the destruction of Tokyo--and he'll be damned if he doesn't see it through.

 

* * *

 

"Ethically and legally speaking," Newt says later, talking around a mouth full of ramen and gesturing wildly with one chopstick, "If a clone is created in a lab and gestated in an artificial womb, then the resulting child is considered the legal and biological offspring of the whoever commissioned the gestation, or provided the genetic material."

 

Newt has been awake, more-or-less, going on forty-eight hours now. He's drifted with two different Kaiju brains in the past two days, and hasn't entirely stopped shaking. His brain is racing with numbers and plans and things he  _needs_ to tell Hermann. The drift in Tokyo fired up his brain like a triple dose of Adderall, and it hasn't worn off yet. He's not sure it ever will. He's pretty sure he can hear colors now. Well, more-so than usual.

 

"So if a child was created from genetic material that had been legally seized, such as a donation, and the person was deceased..." Newt lets the thought hang, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

 

"...then the child would belong to whomever oversaw the gestation, such as the doctor," Hermann says, completing the thought. He can't believe he's discussing plans to clone fallen members of the Jaeger Program. And yet, he can. He drifted with a Kaiju, the Marshall died, and team Gipsy Danger closed the Breach. So many impossible things happened in the last twenty-four hours, what's one more?

 

"It's easy; we just mix them up in the lab, modify them a little, and bake them in one of those baby-easy-bake artificial wombs," Newt explains, and maybe it's the late (or early) hour, or Hermann's had too much to drink, or the adrenaline of helping save the world is finally wearing off, but Hermann burst into near-hysterical laughter at the imagery Newt paints.

 

"Pass them out to foster families among ex-PPDC employees or what-not, and then collect them in a few years," Newt says with a laugh, Hermann's laughter getting a little infectious.

 

"What do we do if the foster-parents get cold feet," Hermann says, sobering, and he doesn't even know why he asks it. Maybe it's because he's weeks away from becoming a father himself. Maybe it's just his analytical brain, preparing for any eventuality.

 

"We can always enforce the tattoo clause," Newt says, thinking over their options, "That's still legal in all of Asia."

 

Hermann nods, but he hopes it doesn't come to that. He won't stoop to permanently tattooing children unless he absolutely has to.

 

"How long do we have?" Newt asks, remembering his earlier request. He knows that if anyone is able to determine quantum-wormholes of inter-dimensional not-technically time-travel, it is Hermann Gottlieb. 

 

"Twenty years," Hermann says, "We have a minimum of twenty years, before the Kaiju return," he says, pushing his scribbled proofs across the table towards Newt.

 

"It's always so sexy when you put math in my science," Newt says, voice low, and Hermann does _not_ blush at his terrible come-on.

 

"Herman," Newt says, raising his beer bottle and clinking it noisily against Hermann's wine glass, "Let's make a baby."

 

Newt grins in the shadowed light of their Shatterdome lab and Hermann thinks, he'll live to regret this. Thirteen years from now, when Hercules Hansen comes to him with blood on his hands and that broken look in his eyes, Hermann will think of this moment. 

 

Hermann should know better--should know better than to try and play god. He has a wife at a home and a baby on the way and he shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be running on six hours of sleep in three days, shouldn't be agreeing to a devil's bargain.

 

Hermann knows he'll live to regret this, but he supposes that's the point. He'll _live_. And if he and Newt do this right, so will the world.

 

"One day we will be held accountable for this," Herman says, and thinks, _One day they will pay_.

 

"One day we will be remembered for this," Newt says, the surety of future vindication alight in his eyes.

 

Hermann doesn't bother telling Newt that it's the same thing. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! :D Please leaves kudos & comments if you liked it, I love to hear what you thought! <3


	3. December, 2031

 

Nate Lambert's first clear memory is from when he's five years old. He's standing in a scientist's laboratory and he is cold. There's a secondary Kaiju brain in a huge jar right in front of him, it's tentacles pressed against the glass at Nate's eye-level, but it doesn't frighten him as much as the man with the auburn hair and the cane does. The man who's standing at the back of the room, looking at Nate like he's seen him before, like he knows him. Nate isn't sure he's ever seen the man before in his life, but he's sure he's been here before.

He's dreamed of this laboratory for years. Sometimes he's exasperated in the dreams, because the world is ending and they're running out of time! Sometimes he's small and frightened. Sometimes, like now, he opens his eyes and finds that he's no longer dreaming.

 

"Hello Lambert," the man with the cane says--a slight German accent in his words, "Do you know who I am?" and Nate thinks, he has never been to Germany. He has never been out of Tokyo, as far as he knows.

 

"Have we...have we met before?" Lambert asks, trying for polite--and succeeding at wary. His little hands fidget with the bottom of his sweater, and he rocks back and forth on his heels. He's small for his age, Hermann absently notes. Hermann made him that way.

 

"I knew you when you were really little," the scientist says and Nate frowns. He doesn't remember that. He doesn't like it when he's not able to remember. Hermann steps forward and gestures to the silver medical bracelet that encircles Nate's left wrist, and asks, "Do you know what that means?"

 

Nate holds up his wrist and stares at the bracelet like it offended him. It's an unusually pensive look for a five year old. 

 

"It means..." Nate says after a moment, clearly racking his brain for the right answer, "It means sometimes other kids can't play with me, and...," he pauses to think, "It makes some people think my Daddy doesn't love me," and he looks more concerned about the latter than the former. He looks to Hermann, searching his face for approval, and Hermann is reminded of his son, Alec--always looking to his Papa for reassurance. Hermann nods, even though Nate's answer is not the one he was expecting, and Nate beams, his smiles scrunching his eyes almost shut. He seems to forget his earlier wariness and steps forward, placing fair hands on the glass of the tank, and only Hermann's presence keeps him from pressing his face to the glass--from saying hello to the monster's brain directly.

 

"Am I less than?" Nate says after a moment, the melancholic tone--so odd in a child's voice--returning to his words. 

 

"Less than?" Hermann says, moving closer to the tank, and sees the Kaiju brain's tentacles align themselves with Nate's small hands, as if they're greeting him.

 

"Everyone else," Nate says, turning his wide eyes to stare at Hermann, "Am I human like everyone else?" 

All the kids in the program are prone to formal speech and questions that aren't age-appropriate, but Lambert is showing the most significant signs of it. Newt hypothesizes that Nate might be picking up cues from Herc, from spending so much one-on-one time with his Original, or be having more memories triggered due to being around his Original's belongings. As a precaution against identity-confusion, neither Nate nor Jake is allowed to live in their Original's home countries--Lambert is being raised in Tokyo and Jake in Johannesburg--but they can't entirely escape reminders of their pasts.

 

"Some people think that," Hermann says, and doesn't say _we made you that way_ , "But that's because you're different from them," he says, in the same voice he uses to explain that there are no monsters in the closet, and Alec is safe to go to sleep, "You're not less than, just different."

 

Hermann leans all his weight on his cane, kneeling on his good leg so that he can be eye-level with Nate, and says, "One day you're going to be very special," like it can placate the guilt Hermann feels every time he looks at Nate. Every time he looks at any of them.

 

"My Daddy tells me I'm already special," Nate says with all the trusting assurance of a five-year-old, undercut with steel. A five-year-old that takes his Daddy's word as absolute truth. Herc is getting more attached than is advisable--Newt's already made a note of it, already put an asterisk next to his name that means "might be a problem in the future". But now, looking at Nate, Hermann understands. He understood the first time he held Alec in his arms, but he tried to deny it. He knew what they were really doing, he just hid behind numbers, shielded from emotional consequence by intellectual dogma. The difference between Hermann and Newt is, Newt can keep lying to himself. Newt is a scientist. Newt isn't a father. The difference between Hermann and Herc is, Herc might decide humanity isn't really worth it.

 

"Do you know what your bracelet says?" Hermann asks, curious as to how much Herc has explained to Nate, since he's clearly opted to not burden Nate with the truth. Newt says that it's better to tell the subjects earlier rather than later (Newt is not a father). Hermann does not envy Herc. He's never envied him anything.

 

"It says Hercules Hansen," Nate says, without looking at Hermann, once again distracted by the aquarium.

 

"Do you know why it says that?" Hermann says gently, trying to coax Nate's attention back to him. Nate purses his lips like Hermann's being silly, and he's not sure the scientist deserves an answer. Like tracing the side of the tank requires his full attention. When Alec visits the laboratory he avoids the tank in the middle of the room at all costs. Even with their polar personalities, there's something about Nate that reminds Hermann of his son. It might be the innocence, or it might be the surety of self.  

 

Nate finally looks at Hermann, and says with a bright smile, "Because that's my Daddy's name," and Hermann knows he's going to hell. Nate, completely oblivious to Hermann's thoughts (or possibly trying to lay the guilt on thicker), takes one hand off the tank and slips it into Hermann's much bigger one. Obviously getting over his earlier trepidation, Nate leans closer to Hermann, being careful not to knock into his cane, and says, "Do they talk to you, too?" softly, his other hand pressed once more against the glass.

 

"Not anymore," Hermann says sadly, looking from the wild strawberry-blond hair of his young subject, to the hind-brain of an ancient monster. It feels like a metaphor for something. Something that Hermann would rather not figure out.

 

Hermann Gottlieb hasn't talked to the Kaiju in over six years. God has been particularly silent as well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! :D Please leaves kudos & comments if you liked it, I love to hear what you thought! <3


	4. January 2026

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the three or so people who are reading this ^-^ Hope you enjoy! <3

 

Baby boy A-11 is born ten months after Project: Maelstrom is green-lit. The first of many successes.

He doesn't have a birth certificate.

 

"Certificate of commission," Herman says, and he feels that lead in his stomach again. Like they're playing god and Hermann's not sure they're merciful ones.

 

"The only way to keep this above board," Newt says--doesn't say--the only way to get away with this, "Is to consider the subjects as property, not legal individuals," and he signs the certificate with his usual messy scrawl, no hesitation in his hand to indicate any misgivings. Hermann's signature is added on the line below Newt's; the most begrudging endorsement known to calligraphy.

 

The laws surrounding cloning are still tenuous at best, and Newt isn't about to let a thing as innocuous as red tape hold up his plans. Most cloned individuals are instated with human rights upon birth. Cloning is a heavily monitored activity in the few countries that it's admitted to being practiced. It's most often used for parents who've lost a child. The "replacement" child is granted the original child's human rights, and replaces them in the human race. Corporate clones are usually seen more as tools, replicas of existing humans, used for projects and space travel. They are never granted citizenship. The legal hardline falls on modification. If clones are simply replicas of their Originals then they're eligible for human rights. If they're modified to 'beyond a natural extent' then they are not. The children of Project Maelstrom fall more towards the latter category. They will  not be allowed to vote, or procreate, or be legally acknowledged as human beings. They will not--technically, legally, speaking--exist. They'll remain status-less. They have not been granted birth certificates, and they'll have no death certificates.

 

To deprive someone of their individuality, their _humanity_ , it's a hard line to cross, even for someone who's done the math. In some ways it's worse than taking a life. At least a life taken had something to lose. It had it's dignity, for however long it got to enjoy it. Hermann cradles the future of Project Maelstrom, and knows that Stacker Pentecost would have approved, but somehow that doesn't make him feel any better.

 

"Can you guarantee me a win," Herman says, feeling uncharacteristically sentimental. Maybe it's because he's holding a newborn child, a perfect ten-toes and ten-fingers physical embodiment of innocence _._ Maybe because he's holding the future. Maybe because Hermann is just a man, just a scientist, just a father. And now there's no denying that they've created life only to put a tag on it. Only to shove it into the Ranger program. Only to raise it to die.

 

"I can guarantee you a chance," says Newt, voice laced with the conviction Hermann wished he could feel.

 

Hope is born at 11:26 on a Wednesday night, almost a year after Raleigh Beckett stopped the clock. Hope is 6 pounds and 4 ounces, with tight dark curls on top of his head, and dark grey eyes that will undoubtedly turn brown in time. 

 

They name him Jake.

 

* * *

 

February, 2026

 

Raleigh has never been much of a planner. That was Yancy's forte'. Yancy, who held the family together after Dad left. Yancy, who got them into the Ranger Program. Yancy, who kept Raleigh's world together. Yancy, who's death tore Raleigh world and mind apart.

 

Raleigh never really thought he'd see twenty-five. He never considered he'd see the end of the war. Or what came next. When Mako pounded on his heart--out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean--she didn't just bring him back to life, she brought him to life for the first time. Raleigh thought he truly died on that Alaskan beach five years ago, and the half-shaded boy who caught a ride off the wall with the Marshall (because what answer was there really to the Marshall's query? ...honestly? Raleigh has already died in a Jaeger) was just the sullen and revenge driven ghost of a better brother. Yancy was a better brother, a better pilot, and a better soldier. Raleigh had got him killed...he'd only thought it fair that he'd join him eventually. But _eventually_ is not five minutes after Marshall Hansen stops the war clock, nor is it a year later when Mako pulls him into a dance that's far more dangerous than a Kwoon spar, and promisingly more eternal. Raleigh finds his scars fading along with the sirens, and the pressing suffocation of the Shatterdome exchanged for a ring around his left finger. Despite himself, he finds that eventually doesn't seem to be happening for a very long time. 

 

Raleigh never dared dream he'd be a father. Not when he was seventeen and fighting for humanity, not when he was twenty-five and resigned to the idea of dying on the wall, dying for nothing but penance. If he ever had the daydream that he'd make it out of the war, he didn't dare hope for happiness to that extent. Never dared to think he'd get the opportunity. Never imagined he'd be that lucky. Or that normal.  When he'd been check over in medical after going through the Breach he'd pretty much known what the verdict was. He knew what being exposed to that much nuclear radiation could do. He knew what he was giving up. It seems a minor loss in comparison. He thought he'd been giving up his life, it turns out he only gave up the ability to create life. Still, being told he'd never be able to have biological children hurt more than he'd thought it would. How could it hurt that much? To be told you were never going to be have something you'd thought you'd come to terms with never having in the first place. _The heart is a strange thing_ , Raleigh thinks, when he cries in his hospital bed after hearing the news. He saved the world. And just because the price he paid isn't the one he expected to, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell.

 

A year later, Hermann calls and tells him about Jake. Jake Pentecost is four weeks old. He doesn't have a social security number. He doesn't have a family.

 

Raleigh told Newt that they'd think it over...but he also told him to expect them in Hong Kong as soon as possible. Raleigh could never say no to a child. And Mako could never say no to him. It almost seemed too good to be true, but Raleigh has died twice and is no longer the sort to wait for the other shoe to drop. The moment Raleigh holds Jake he knows he's meant to be their's, no matter the consequences of falling in love with a child who's fate is already owned by a corporation.

 

Jacob Yancy Pentecost-Becket is beautiful. He's a warm bundle swathed in blankets, and still smaller than Jasmine was when Raleigh first held her. He blinks his big eyes sleepily at Raleigh, curling his whole hand around Mako's index finger as if to draw them both closer. He needn't try. Raleigh can tell she's already a little in love too.

 

"Thank you, Hermann," Raleigh says, his eyes alight as he meets the doctor's gaze across the room, from the couch in Hermann's office where he sits, his arms around his wife and son. 

 

The worst part is that he means it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave kudos & comments if you liked it <3 I love to hear what you thought! <3


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